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Joanna Rotté, Emeritus Professor of Theatre at Villanova University, is a writer, teacher, director, and actor residing in Center City, Philadelphia. Her books include Scene Change (A Theatre Diary: Prague, Moscow, Leningrad) and Acting with Adler. Since 2002 she has been the feature theatre essayist for a print and online publication: http://www.soulamericanactor.com.

She has directed featured productions for the Philadelphia Fringe Festival, including her own plays: All Victorious Ocean: the Noble Life of Yeshe Tsogyal, Tantric Yogini; Death of the Father;Art Talk (starring the late great art historian and critic Arthur Danto); and Prajna (based on a script by the fully realized Tibetan meditation master Chögyam Trungpa). She is a meditation practitioner in the Shambhala tradition and has recorded five audio-books written by the beloved Pema Chödrön: http://www.shambhala.com/catalogsearch/result/?q=rotte.

on January 29, 2016

on September 29, 2015

The recently opened memorial to United Flight 93 is a glorious work of art that blends architectural structures and crafted landscape to create a contemplative place for visitors and a resting place for those who died.

on June 30, 2015

For Jonathan Kozol, summoning up vivid memories as he wrote a memoir of his father's battle with Alzheimer's was mostly a pleasant process. It kept his father, as well as his mother, alive for him after their deaths. But the last few months of concluding the book were hard and painful, he said, because it meant saying good-bye to his parents all over again.

on May 23, 2015

The qualities that FDR cultivated — fortitude, equanimity, compassion, and transcendence — to live a prodigiously fruitful life in spite of extreme debilitation were the qualities that enabled him to lead the nation out of the morass of the Great Depression and through the horrors of World War II.

on March 31, 2015

I visited Olana on the first day of spring with chilly air, bare trees, snow on the ground, and ice in the Hudson. The house or villa or monument is a marvel, a fantasy, an unlikely but pleasing blend of styles — Persian, Moorish, Italian, and then some.

on February 28, 2015

The theme of this year’s Philadelphia Flower Show is “the movies,” although the organizers are being somewhat disingenuous in that only Disney movies are included. The Disney-only focus allows for marvelous flights of fancy but limits the emotional range, and emotional maturity, of the entries.

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Broad Street Review

Welcome to Broad Street Review — an arts and culture website for thinking people with strong opinions.

Since its launch in 2005, BSR has sought to promote the exchange of viewpoints rather than any particular point of view. To that end, we welcome commentary from professionals and amateurs alike about the performing and visual arts, as well as any other field of interest to our eclectic group of contributors.